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Egypt Detains Journalists It Says Aired ‘False News’

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities detained a team of journalists working for the Al Jazeera English news channel on Sunday, including an Australian correspondent and the channel’s Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief, accusing them of broadcasting illegally and meeting with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that the Egyptian government classified a terrorist organization last week.

Early Monday, the authorities detained a producer who worked with the channel.

The arrests appeared intended to further isolate the Brotherhood by deterring journalists from interviewing its members or reporting on its continuing protests. The Interior Ministry released a statement suggesting that the journalists, who were working out of suites in a hotel in Cairo, had been holding meetings of the Brotherhood in their rooms.

The ministry accused the journalists of broadcasting “false news” to the Qatar-based channel and possessing materials that promoted “incitement,” including information about campus strikes by students who supported the Brotherhood — another topic widely covered in the press.

Al Jazeera said the detained journalists included the bureau chief, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, who had worked for CNN and contributed to The New York Times, and Peter Greste, an Australian correspondent for Al Jazeera who won a Peabody Award last year while working for the BBC in Somalia. A cameraman, Mohamed Fawzy, and another producer, Baher Mohamed, were also detained, the network said.

News of the arrests came after Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, said Egypt could hold a presidential election before electing a new Parliament, raising the possibility that the military-backed government was preparing to deviate from the transition plan it unveiled after the ouster of the former president — Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader — in July. The government has said it would follow that plan, citing it as evidence of its commitment to democracy.

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Analysts have said that switching the order of the elections could allow Egypt’s leaders to maintain tighter control over their outcome, by allowing the newly elected president to influence the makeup of Parliament.

In the past week, the government has moved forcefully to eliminate the Brotherhood. It banned membership in the group last Wednesday after blaming it for a blast that killed 16 people, even though another unrelated group claimed responsibility.

Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation in New York, said the government “seized on the moment and the grotesque nature of the attack” to accomplish several goals. While hard-liners in the security services seek to eradicate the Brotherhood, the terrorist designation gives other officials a “rhetorical” tool to stir interest in the coming elections, Mr. Hanna said. It also gives them a firmer legal basis to detain protesters and further suppress dissent ahead of the vote, he said.

As the government tries to consolidate power, it has faced an unexpectedly sharp challenge from militant groups. On Sunday, a car bomb explosion outside a military intelligence building north of Cairo wounded at least five people, the third such bombing in less than a week.